Text messages help to stop crop raiding elephant and save families' crops and the elephant's life.

Kimani, a 5 tonne african bull elephant, has a soft spot for villagers' crops in the Ol Pejetia Conservancy, Kenya. At harvest time on the neighbouring village farms he has helped himself to a free takeaway bringing him into conflict with the aggrieved and frightened farmers, who were threatening to take the law into their own hands.

This kind of incident can seriously undermine the efforts of conservationists to persuade local communities that it is in their long term interests to live side by side with elephants. No amount of community development can compensate for the devastating loss of livelihood. In one night 15 hungry families once saw their entire harvest wiped out in a single crop raiding incident.

In a desperate bid to save him, Save the Elephants decided to use him as a guinea pig to test a portable early warning system. They fitted him with a collar in which they inserted a mobile phone sim card. Then they used a Global Positioning System to set up a virtual fence around the perimeter of the conservancy. Whenever Kimani strays beyond the invisible barrier he triggers an automated text message which alerts the  conservancy HQ. A lone ranger then sets out in a jeep to intercept the elephant and herd him back towards the conservancy.

Whilst still at the embryonic stage there are signs of success for this trial. Crop raiding has diminished appreciably as although he was apprehended on numerous occasions in the early stages of the trial, Kimani has not reoffended for several months. His improved behaviour has also influenced other members of the group with the result that villagers who previously had to resort to banging their pots and pans all night to ward off raiding elephants can now sleep soundly.

In the words of a villager who once had to fight off a hungry elephant with a burning stick "We can live together. Elephants have the right to live and we have the right to live too."

( Extract of article by Tim Knight, Fauna & Flora, October 2009
 

Comment: UCF works with the Uganda Wildlife Authority and communities in Uganda to help alleviate animal crop raiding  in a number of its projects.  In addition to saving harvests for families, the projects have helped to reduce illness through men no longer having to guard their fields at night and to improve school attendance through children not having to patrol the fields in the daytime.

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